During the winter of 1943 the death rate became appalling. Out of an original five hundred thousand who had been put into the ghetto, only fifty thousand were alive by the end of the year.
One day in mid-January, Mundek and Rebecca took Dov aside before he was scheduled to descend into the sewer on a trip to Wanda’s.
“It seems that we don’t have much of a chance just to sit around and talk these days,” Mundek said.
“Dov,” Rebecca said, “we all talked it over here and took a vote while you were in Warsaw the last time. We have decided that we want you to stay on the other side of the wall.”
“You have something special for me to do?” Dov asked.
“No … you don’t understand.”
“What do you mean?”
“We mean,” Rebecca said, “that we have decided to send certain members out to stay.”
Dov didn’t understand it. He knew the Redeemers needed him. No one in the entire ZOB knew the sewer routes as well as he did. If the ZOB was preparing to stage a defense then he would be more valuable than ever. Besides, the papers and travel passes he forged had helped get over a hundred people out of Poland. Dov looked at his sister and brother questioningly.
Rebecca pressed an envelope into Dov’s hands. “You have money there and papers. Stay with Wanda until she can find you a Christian family to live with.”
“You didn’t take a vote. This is your idea and Mundek’s. I won’t go.”
“You will go and that is an order,” Mundek said.
“It is not an order,” Dov answered.
“It is an order from me as head of the Landau family!”
The three of them stood in the tiny earthen room in one corner of the bunker. It was very quiet. “It is an order,” Mundek repeated.
Rebecca put her arms around Dov and stroked his blond hair. “You have grown up, Dov. We have not had much chance to spoil you, have we? I have watched you go into the sewers a hundred times and I have watched you bring us stolen food. We haven’t given you much of a boyhood.”
“It is not your fault.”
“Dov,” Mundek said. “Please don’t deny Rebecca and me this one thing we want. We have not given you much. You must let us try to give you your life.”
“Mundek, Rebecca. I don’t care as long as I am with you.”
“Please … please … understand us. One of the Landau family must live. We want you to live for us all.”
Dov looked at the brother he worshiped. Mundek’s eyes pleaded.
“I understand,” Dov whispered. “I will live.”
He looked at the package and slipped it into a canvas so that it wouldn’t get wet in the sewers. Rebecca crushed his head against her bosom. “We will meet in Eretz Israel,” she said.
“Yes … in the land of Israel.”
“You have been a good soldier, Dov,” Mundek said. “I am proud. Shalom, I’hitraot.”
“Shalom, I’hitraot,” Dov repeated.
Dov Landau spent his thirteenth birthday in the sewers beneath Warsaw wading to Wanda’s apartment with a heart so heavy it nearly broke. In another day and another world it would have been his bar mitzvah.
JANUARY 18,1943
Three days after Dov left the ghetto for the temporary safety of Wanda’s apartment the Germans, Polish Blues, and Lithuanians converged on the ghetto. With only fifty thousand Jews left they began rounding up Jews for the final phase of the “final solution.”
The Germans and their cohorts ran into a hail of bullets from ZOB defensive positions. They fled, leaving heavy casualties.
The news spread through Warsaw like wildfire!
The Jews were staging an uprising!
That night every ear in Warsaw was tuned to the secret ZOB radio which repeated this appeal over and over and over again:
“Fellow -Poles! Today we struck a blow against tyranny! We ask all our brothers outside the ghetto to arise and strike against the enemy! Join us!”
The appeal fell on deaf ears. But from ZOB headquarters on Mila Street the flag of the Star of David was raised. Alongside it fluttered the flag of Poland. The Jews of the ghetto had chosen to fight to the death beneath a banner which had been denied them in life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Germans were chagrined at having been chased from the ghetto. Konrad, Gestapo chief of the ghetto security detail, reported to Hans Frank, the governor of Poland, that the matter would be cleared up in two or three days. The Polish people, who
had been told previously that the Jews were cowards, were
now told that the fighting had been the work of a few lunatics and sex deviates-the types who raped Polish girls.
ZOB assumed control of the ghetto and disposed of the Jewish Council. The fighters made a swift and merciless reprisal on all known collaborators and then moved into set defensive positions.
Hans Frank decided he would not play into ZOB’s hand by making an attack on the ghetto. The Germans decided to laugh1 off the attack and minimize it. They cut loose with a propaganda barrage and asked the people of the ghetto to come forth for voluntary resettlement and guaranteed they would be given decent treatment in exchange for “honest labor.”
ZOB issued an order informing the Jews remaining in the ghetto that they would be shot if they conformed with the German request. There would be no more evacuation.
After two weeks of quiet the Germans moved patrols in once again to round up Jews. This time they came heavily armed and moved with extreme caution. From carefully prepared positions the ZOB opened fire. Again the Germans fled beyond the wall.
The Germans decided to think it all over. Their press and radio were indignant over the Jewish Bolsheviks who were causing all the trouble. While the Germans wailed the ZOB tightened their defensive setups and desperately continued to plead for help from the Polish underground. They expanded their plea to the general public, but no arms came, no underground help came, and only a few dozen volunteers crossed into the ghetto “under the wall” to fight.
The German staff mapped one big crushing assault to wipe out the remains of the ghetto. The day they picked for the attack was the beginning of Passover, the Jewish holiday cele-. brated in commemoration of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses.
At three o’clock in the morning, three thousand crack SS troops flanked with Polish Blues and Lithuanians threw a ring around the entire ghetto. Dozens of searchlights crisscrossed to pick out possible targets for German mortars and light artillery. The barrage lasted until daylight.
At dawn the SS launched their assault over the wall. Converging from several sides they penetrated deep into the heart of the ghetto without resistance.
From hidden barricades, from house tops, from windows, the ZOB-men and women-turned loose a barrage of small-arms fire at point-blank range against the trapped and surrounded Germans. For the third time the Germans scurried from the ghetto.
In blind fury the Germans came back into the ghetto with
tanks, and the tanks were met with a storm of gasoline-filled bottles which turned the iron monsters into flaming coffins. With the tanks disabled the German SS troops were forced to flee again; this time they left several hundred dead in the streets.
The ZOB fighters rushed out of hiding to take the German guns as well as their uniforms.
Konrad was dismissed and SS General Stroop was called in to take command. He was ordered to destroy the ghetto so thoroughly that no one would ever again dare challenge the power of the Nazis.
Stroop mounted attack after attack, day after day. Each new attack utilized a different strategy and hit from a different direction. Each attack and each patrol met the same fate. They were repulsed by the ZOB, whose members fought like madmen-house by house, room by room, step by step. They refused to be taken alive. Homemade land mines and booby traps, violent counterattacks, raw courage beat the Germans out of the ghetto every time they entered. Ten days passed and the Germans were desperate for a victory. They made a concerted attack on the ghetto’s lone hospital-entered, shot every patient, blew up the building, and claimed they had destroyed ZOB headquarters.